Chronicler Saga: Vignettes
by TheChroniclerJon
Summary: Read after "Chronicler Saga: Teen Titans". A series of scenes that serve to expand the characters and events featured in the Chronicler Saga.
1. Robin

The crystal lay dark and inert against the blue bird emblazoned across Nightwing's uniform. He concentrated, sweat dripping in unheeded torrents down his face as he sent punch after kick after knee after elbow into a bare wooden pole in the center of the gym. He was aware and oblivious: aware of his body singing as it danced the dance of death, aware of his surroundings to a degree that bordered the preternatural, oblivious to his body repairing the damage to his body quick as he inflicted it, oblivious to the dim nimbus limning his form like a second skin.


	2. Beast Boy

With a scowl of stern concentration on his face, he morphed.

From his base form he shifted to a box turtle, and then back. Next, a bearded dragon. Now a ball python. A sparrow. A brief moment was spent as a trout.

Back to human. He checked the mirror before furrowing his brow.

A Main coon. Bloodhound. Vampire bat. A kangaroo mouse, then a mountain gorilla, then an African elephant. Back to human.

Each time he checked the mirror. Each time his ear remained missing.

"Why can I lose ears when I morph but not grow it back?" he grumbled to himself. Shaking out his arms, he focused and shifted.

A koala. A black racer. Mongoose, snow crab, peregrine falcon.

Human.

A check in the mirror.

The growl was wordless and primal, resonating from deep in his chest, and then he began to flicker through forms. Species were forgotten, his body flowing and reforming too quickly to settle into any one form for long. Instinct drove him as it often did, and he began to think in terms of genus rather than species.

Rallina-Eupresis-Dendropsophus-PrimateRhopiellaOctop-

A tearing pain shot through him as he stumbled to the ground, a cry of shock rising from him. The agony subsided, and he struggled to his feet with a grunt before staring in the mirror.

The ear was still gone, but he hardly noticed. His reflection stared back at him with wide eyes, a gorilla with a pair of sucker-covered tentacles writhing from his shoulder blades.

He concentrated and shifted back to his base form. Another thought and he attempted to bring the chimera back, without success.

Fascinated and intrigued by this unexpected and unknown dimension to his abilities, Beast Boy set to work attempting to recreate what he had done accidentally.

His lone ear twitched, it's lost brother forgotten.


	3. Harry

Harry sat in his office and watched the door close behind the young man that called himself Jon while fingering a vial of the man's blood.

He had claimed that he needed a message sent to himself. Years of experience as a private investigator led Harry to question, to be suspicious, and to look for the hidden angle.

Why did he need a message sent to himself? Why not use mundane means to do so? For that matter, why not leave himself a note? Further, _how_ had he known what could be done in the first place? Jon had specifically used the term "thaumaturgy" which indicated magical knowledge, but more importantly had indicated that Jon knew more or less exactly what Harry was capable of and how he'd go about fulfilling the request.

He had been charming, certainly, even likable. He had a charisma that belied the network of tattoos running across his skin, a pattern that the shadow of Lasciel he housed within himself shuddered and shrank from. That meant that he or someone he knew was powerful enough to intimidate a Denarian. It meant that he knew people and how to get them comfortable.

That very fact made Harry rather _uncomfortable_.

So far, the theories he was coming up with were not the sort that allowed him to sleep well at night. Why would a message need to be sent via thaumaturgy? Because Jon wouldn't know where he would be when he got it. Why wouldn't he know where he'd be when he got it? Poor planning, perhaps, or a chaotic and nomadic lifestyle. But then, why not a note to oneself, even one sent to an e-mail address that could be checked from anywhere in the world?

Because he wouldn't be in reach of technology? Or...

… because he wouldn't know to check for it.

He knew he needed a message now, so why would he not know later? It implied that he expected to forget. It implied that he expected something in his mind to be altered, and _that_ implied someone was breaking the Laws.

Whenever that happened, it inevitably came back to bite him on the ass, and it usually took the time to _chew thoroughly_.

Still, no matter what angle he looked at it, there didn't seem to be much likelihood that anything illegal was being performed by Jon himself, and thus little chance that Harry could get himself roped into the charges as an accomplice or an abettor. The request itself, while strange, was not illegal or even particularly difficult. The money offered wasn't even suspicious, being normal American cash drawn from a local branch of a national bank (and not, for example, Nazi gold or rare materials from the Nevernever). Further, despite his trained reservations, Harry _did_ actually like Jon and found his gut telling him to trust him.

So Harry picked up the small, tightly rolled tube of paper that Jon had provided and pocketed it along with the vial of blood, and proceeded to lock up and head home for the day.


	4. Arform, First Payment

_"Messenger Arform..."_

 _"Yes, Chronicler. The message is thus: 'We, the Arform, request the Chronicler act in their official capacity as mediator between the Arform and the Teen Titans.' As demanded by custom, we offer payment: three of the old form."_

 _I raised an eyebrow. Payments of the old form were very rare, and consisted of stories or knowledge known to three or fewer persons. To offer three payments for a mediation request spoke of sheer desperation. "You understand what it is you offer?" I asked._

 _"We do."_

* * *

I stood in the lee of an abandoned warehouse with a bitter wind blowing eddies of frost and refuse around me, chilled from its passage over the bay that lay black and wave-capped mere yards away.

When I had received the augury I nearly hadn't paid it heed. So little of my magics had been working correctly since I'd arrived in this dimension that I had learned to be distrustful of my instincts. I figured that I'd give it five more minutes before I headed home.

Or, better yet, to a bar. It was _cold,_ and I could use a little something to warm my body and spirits.

Prior to my departure, however, I became aware of a familiar shape forming in the wall near where I huddled out of the wind. A moment later, the hulking shape of the beast that called itself Arform stepped from solid cinder block.

The strange, dreamlike feeling of communicating with this creature surrounded me, and I was struck anew by how everything was made both more and less real by this odd form of perception. Colors were vivid and possessed a quality not found in nature. Shapes were more indistinct. Thoughts seemed to influence my surroundings to a certain extent, and it was with an effort of will that I brought my full attention to bear on Arform.

It stood before me silently and completely still. Even a soldier will sway slightly as their balance readjusts itself, but Arform stood unfazed by the wind which, I belatedly realized, no longer bit or pushed against me so much as it seemed to blow _through_ me.

"What is this," I wondered to myself in a muttered exclamation beneath my breath.

"Some have called it the Fade," Arform responded in a voice that seemed to consist of both many voices and none. "Others have referred to it as the Astral Plane, Outside, and the Nevernever. It shares reality with the Kithados, but remains apart from it."

I shook off the scholarly part of myself that demanded further answers and instead forced myself to get to business. "Why are we meeting, Arform?"

It blinked, a deliberate and mechanical action that was clearly performed for the sake of expressing surprise. It was artificial and stale, and vaguely disquieting. "We are here to provide your first payment."

As Arform proceeded, the world around me washed into shadowy recreations of his tale. I sat cross-legged upon the ground and soaked in each detail.

* * *

In a world different from but not overly dissimilar to your own, Chronicler, it came to pass that a babe was born with magical talent. This babe grew to be a child, and the boy grew to a man, and the man grew to a legend. His childhood was unremarkable, if somewhat lonely; he made friends infrequently and lost them easily, his talent and obsession with the magical arts isolating him from his peers and marking him as an oddity in the eyes of the adults.

It was in the summer of his seventeenth year that this mage who was no longer a boy and yet not quite a man chanced to meet a strange girl. She was not of the village, nor the surrounding farmlands, and neither was she of the roving caravans that claimed the winding roads as their home. She called herself "Cherri" and called the man-boy "Godur", and claimed she was of the Fae.

In the ways of young men meeting strange girls, Godur became enchanted and entranced, and sought everything he could of Cherri. She was ageless, she claimed, and her beauty was unearthly. She held powers beyond the ken of mortal men, and kept herself distant from them lest she lose control and cause inadvertent harm.

"I am a mortal man," Godur had whispered to her as they lay in the cool spray of a brook's banks in the height of a warm summer day.

"You are more," she had whispered, but only smiled coquettishly when asked for further details and said no more.

Cherri taught Godur of the ways of the Fae, their magics and their means, the way they thought and the way they lived, and with each conversation and longing, lingering glance he fell deeper in love with her.

"Many things will be forgiven you due to your abilities," she had said during one of their lessons in the sun-dappled glades that dotted the eternal forest. "You are known to be a mage, and to be Fae-touched, and so you will have powers beyond normal men, either your own or attributed to you." She lay a hand upon his chest and it burned his heart like a roaring tavern-fire. "You will be blamed for much and maligned by many for the same reasons. No matter what," she said, drawing back and giving him a fierce glare that looked out of place on her elfin face, "you must never perform the impossible, else terrible vengeance shall be brought to bear upon you."

"And what is impossible to a man such as I?" boasted Godur in the way young men have attempted to impress young women since the species was new.

"It is not for you to decide your own limits, Godur," Cherri said in a serious tone that belied her soft form and gentle features. "Ask not, 'What is impossible for me?' but rather, 'What do others think impossible for me?' Your limits are not of your own making, and you must not attempt to surpass them."

Churlishness seeped into his voice when he questioned why.

"Hubris is punished, Godur. I'd not see you go the way of-" and she was silent and would say no more, and melted into the shadows of the forest like a will-o-wisp despite Godur's apologies.

* * *

I sat there in silent thought for long minutes as I reflected upon the tale told to me. There was something there, just beyond my comprehension, maddeningly out of reach.

Suddenly, Arform spoke once more. "There is more to the tale, Chronicler, but you grow weary and the dawn approaches. We would have you at your most attentive."

"Another time, then," I agreed as I stood. As Arform turned to leave, facing the same wall he had originally appeared in, I couldn't help but ask, "Why this tale, Arform? Why this particular story?"

Arform turned back to look at me with those gimlet eyes and stated, "You know it not, but you have need of it."

And for just a moment before the spell broke and the freezing coastal winds bit at me again I would swear that I heard a note of pity in Arform's fading, ethereal voice.


	5. Starfire

_Dear Mr. and Mrs. Adham;_

 _I am Princess Koriand'r of Tamaran, but you would know me better as Starfire of the Teen Titans. I am hoping that you have not already destroyed this letter. I know that what happened at PS118 was a horrific event, made all the more tragic by the death of your daughter, Kamil. I wished to extend my condolences and speak of the event a bit, in the hope this might help you find closure._

 _On my birth planet there is not a great and diverse population like you find on Earth. Tamaran is home to a couple hundred million persons, with maybe a dozen million more in various colonies or on starships. Our genetics and our culture are much more homogenized than yours. We all share a common religion. We all share a common, overarching history. Our folklore is indistinguishable from planet to planet. Tamaraneans all generally look like me- green eyes, red hair, orange skin, with the rare exception of those that possess a paler skin-tone and black hair, who are considered exotically beautiful._

 _Your daughter was a beautiful child to my eyes, through my cultural predilections. I'm sure she was far more beautiful to your own, and immeasurably precious._

 _My people don't have children often, and we don't have many. Each of them is considered precious by my people. Crimes against children are virtually unheard of on Tamaran, and its perpetrators dealt with in a very permanent fashion. I imagine that you wish I was being dealt with in such a fashion as well. I also imagine that you seek answers. I know that I do as well._

 _What happened to your daughter, her classmates, and the people of Jump City was a horrible tragedy, senseless and cruel. However, such events are not unknown on Tamaran, and I would share with you what answers I can in the hope that they would ease your minds._

 _I mentioned shared folklore and a shared religion among my people. Ours is a polytheistic religion with a strong oral tradition and a focus on ancestor worship. X'hal is our principal deity, and she has a daughter known as V'lha. V'lha is a scholar where X'hal is a warrior, and it was the scholar who first discovered and studied the creatures that came to be known on Tamaran as V'lha ruthanorks and here on Earth as zombies._

 _Now, I'm given to understand that unlike on my home planet there are many religions on Earth, and that they are as diverse as the people that practice them. I am also given to understand that the vast majority are similar in that they believe in a place of good and a place of evil that are separate from this planet, that they are led by a being of surpassing goodness who has other lesser beings of goodness who are even still greater than mortals like ourselves. That in opposition to these being of goodness there exist beings of evil that work to the detriment of the living and seek their destruction._

 _On Tamaran, V'lha determined that it was these evil beings that were responsible for the V'lha ruthanorks. Their spirits were vacant from their bodies prior to their reanimation. That is to say, they were already dead before they attacked their fellows. Giving these poor beings the True Death is considered an honor and a mercy, as their bodies can then be given the appropriate funerary rites and their families can visit them in peace._

 _I'm sure, however, that alien history and religion is going to be suspect to you. Accordingly, I've also included an advance report from STAR Labs regarding their results from a few test subjects they were able to capture and study. Also, an excerpt from a book written here on Earth by a human named Jon who, it seems, studied the evil spirits of Earth._

 _Finally, I wish to say that you have the utmost sympathies from myself and every other citizen in Jump City. This is the most costly disaster that Jump City has ever weathered in terms of human suffering. Husbands have lost wives, children have lost parents, and most tragically... parents have lost children. I will be reciting the Dirge of V'lha during the mayor's memorial service in two weeks' time. It is a tale of sorrow, discovery, and eventually redemption. I hope that it will bring you comfort, and I am sorry that the comfort is necessary._

 _Yours in Sorrow;_

 _Princess Koriand'r of Tamaran_

* * *

Starfire sighed and read the letter over, checking the dictionary and style guide closely as she did so. Finally, she folded the letter with the enclosures and placed it within its envelope. She crossed the Adhams of of the list and checked the next name. Grabbing a new sheet of paper, she positioned it in front of her, took a deep breath, and squared her shoulders before putting the tip of the pen to the first line...

 _Dear Mrs. Roberts;_

 _I am Princess Koriand'r of Tamaran, but you would know me better as Starfire of the Teen Titans. I am hoping that you have not already destroyed this letter. I know that what happened at PS118 was a horrific event, made all the more tragic by the death of your husband, Thomas, and your son, Raymond. I wished to extend my condolences and speak of the event a bit, in the hope this might help you find closure..._


	6. Cyborg

He hadn't dreamed since the accident.

He didn't sleep, really, he recharged. He had pictures running through his head when he did so, but they weren't really dreaming, per se. His brain was an unparalleled amalgamation of cybernetics and tissue, the line between man and machine so artfully blurred as to be non-existent. Charging was an excellent time to perform processor-heavy tasks that were inconvenient to run during the day. Defragmentation, cache-clearing, file-tree management, the list of tedious background tasks went on and on. At times, the sensor and mnemonic subroutines were worked on, and these triggered what Cyborg had come to refer to as "dreams" to avoid the long lectures an accurate explanation required.

He hadn't dreamed since the accident, but now he couldn't stop.

An endless parade of orderlies, nurses, and doctors. Each shaken to jelly by his sonic cannon. Each summarily dispatched with an axe. Some, with his bare hands.

It was more than memory. Sometimes they looked up, eyes rolling in a boneless head, tongues and lips writhing to form words without teeth or jaws to shape them, and it was only after they were killed that Cyborg's auditory interpretation subroutines parsed out the fact that the wordless gruntings had been begging for mercy, for help, for _life._ He watched this and begged for it to end.

It was important that his charging cycle wasn't interrupted, except in the case of an emergency. The Tower's alarm system was, in fact, the only thing that could interrupt it.

He hadn't dreamed since the accident.

He wished he had known then how lucky he'd been.


	7. Arform, First Payment (Part 2)

This evening was calm, but no warmer than the previous. I made haste to the same alcove within which I had huddled the night prior, and waited for Arform to appear.

I needn't have worried. Within moments of my arrival the bricks deformed and formed the hulking bulk of Arform. Without hesitation or pleasantries, it continued from where it left off...

* * *

The basic thing that Cherri stressed to Godur was that the Fae were different from mortals. They were, for all intents and purposes, immortal, and thus time carried a very different meaning for them.

It was twenty years before Godur saw Cherri again. In that time he had grown as a mage and become renowned as a warlock, a battle-hardened and freelance wizard who claimed no lord as liege. He had fought in many engagements for the highest bidder, and allowed his reputation to flow before him as both herald and harbinger. He was feared for his prowess and praised for his adherence to his word, and the tales told of his abilities stretched credulity.

Although he went by the name Godur, he had largely forgotten Cherri and her lessons, save in the evanescent manner of men remembering summer trysts of their youths. He had moved on and made a name for himself: a name as a warlock, a mercenary... and a slaver. This wasn't unusual, by any means. Slavery was an accepted (if generally thought of as a distasteful) reality in the world where he lived. It was a business like any other, and as Godur would tell you, you couldn't be at war ALL the time, and so it kept him in ale and allowed him to travel.

He had ranged from the sun-worshiping empire along the southern sea to the frozen northern tundras where the tribes worshiped the animus of all creation. He traveled the western island chains where the fishermen cast charms upon their ships to aid in the catch and prevent shipwreck, and he had hiked east through the mountains that were home to weyrwolves and wampyres and broke bread and bartered with both before viewing the undulating plains of the edge of forever on its far slopes. As he traveled, he learned, and as he learned, his power and his reputation grew.

It came to be that one spring when the apple blossoms were juicy with nectar and the bees floated through the air like fuzzy striped raindrops, Godur was on contract for a Visigoth chieftain. There was a dragon, it was whispered around the fires at night, a ravenous beast with scales greener than a new leaf and a hunger more voracious than the fire that streamed past its lips. It had taken several of the young maidens from the village, and several warriors were lost as well in attempting to fell the beast once it had been tracked back to its lair. It stood as tall as the chieftain's hut, longer than a full caravan, and broader than the nearby river.

Godur listened to these tales and recognized them as the exaggerations they were. The beast was larger than life because it gave reason for their warriors' failures. It breathed fire because everyone knew that dragons breathed fire. It took only the maidens because the skalds' tales were specific in the appetite of dragons for virgins.

Yet there was truth here as well.

Green dragons were unknown in this part of the world, and no local tale he'd ever heard had mentioned one of that hue. Red and black, yes, but never green this far west. It was either hunting the villagers or, more likely, defending itself from their aggression. Humans made poor fodder for drakes, given that there existed larger prey with less of a tendency for fighting back and, it must be said, vengeance. Aside from which, a dragon of the size they claimed would not hesitate to attack the village directly, especially since there was no mage among the tribe to give it pause.

Something wasn't right, and Godur was now contracted to end the draconic threat. He was very careful in how he had worded this contract. He was not contracted to end the dragon, just the threat. It was entirely possible that this could be solved rationally. Dragons, after all, were intelligent beings fully capable of discourse and possessing of motivations that were not always beyond the ken of mortals.

The chieftain insisted on sending an entourage along with Godur, and despite polite protestations and more strongly worded denials, the morning two days after accepting the contract found Godur moving on the dragon's lair while accompanied by two others.

The first was a hulking brute of a man, fully seven feet tall and three wide at the shoulders, heavily muscled and light on his feet in the manner of expert swordsmen. He was named Hrongar, and had been the chieftain's personal bodyguard for forty winters or more. He wielded an axe with two heads affixed to a long haft with a sword blade where most other weapons would have a pommel. It was carried with the calm assurance of a man that was well-accustomed to its use.

The other was Hrongar's opposite in nearly every way. Answering to Viventus, the man wore the thick robes of the priesthood with difficulty, as his wiry form was wholly insufficient to the task of moving in them with anything approaching grace. An evangelist from the southern empire, Viventus had lived in the village for two years and was universally considered to be well-liked, a touch addled, and utterly harmless.

Of the two, Godur considered Viventus to be far more dangerous.

The lair was three days ride by horse, and they were well-provisioned for the trip. Days were spent in relative silence, the narrow roads winding through the forests precluding easy conversation, and nights were spent trading stories and histories. Hrongar spoke of his childhood, of the roving herds of ungulates that his people followed, hunted, and worshiped, and of battles he had participated in. Viventus had several amusing stories of politicians and scholars caught in compromising positions, some tales of his god and his fellow priests, as well as chiming in with gentle witticisms and inoffensive jokes. Godur, for his part, recounted tales of his travels and the peoples and creatures he had met. When asked about his battles and the rumors surrounding him, he smiled mysteriously in an unconscious imitation of Cherri and refused to confirm or deny anything.

They arrived and, after much argument, Godur convinced the two other men to make camp while he scouted the entrance of the cave that the dragon was nesting in. He leaned heavily on his reputation and made himself unseeable in order to cement his argument. In the end it was Godur alone that approached the cave.

The cave reeked of some unknown agent, a barely-visible green haze wafted from the entrance in fumes that burnt the lung and drew tears to the eye. Breathing shallowly through his mouth, Godur entered the lair of his bounty.

It was a cave much less grand than others that Godur had traveled through, an utterly ordinary opening in the hillside lined with rock and floored with leaf-mould and dirt that had been blown or floated in during storms. The only thing that set this cave apart from others wwas the poisonous emerald dragon curled along one wall in the manner of a dog.

And held between his forepaws, akin to a bone, was a girl.

The beast was the size of a cart horse and easily stretched twenty feet from wing-tip to wing-tip. Its scales glimmered wetly in the scant light that filtered in from the cave, and claws the size of daggers flexed gently as it breathed.

Softly, and quiet as death, Godur stepped through the entrance and made his way to the back wall of the cave. As he stepped past the dragon the girl scrunched up her nose and turned her head minutely, nearly awakening from what was clearly an uneasy slumber. Ignoring her, the warlock continued on until he stood with his back to the wall behind the dragon. Dropping the veil of invisibility from around his person, Godur spread his arms wide with his empty hands visible and pointing towards the dragon.

He then spoke.

"Hail, Drake of the Eastern Forests. I am Godur, son of none, warlock on a mission of peace from Chieftain Alaric of the Visigoths. I approach peace-bound and seeking an audience. Would you treat with me?"


End file.
